Discover

The 'counties' are primary territorial subdivisions of the Republic of 'Croatia'. In Croatian they are called ''županije'' in plural and ''županija'' in singular form.
There is a total of 21 counties in the country.

Contents

History

Organization

List of counties

Naming

Cities

References

See also

History

Croatia has had counties since the Middle Ages. However, their sizes, names and positions changed with time.
The present-day counties were introduced in the 1990 Constitution of Croatia, and have only slightly changed since.
Previously, in socialist Yugoslavia, the Croatian Republic was divided into ''općine'' (sing. ''općina'') which were smaller than the present counties. The designation ''općina'' has been retained for municipalities which are one level smaller than the ''županije'' and also smaller than the old ''općine''.
The political representatives elected for county government used to form a Chamber of Counties (''Županijski dom'') in the Croatian Parliament, between 1993 and 2001.

Organization

Each county has an assembly (''županijska skupština'') which is composed of representatives elected by popular vote, using party-list proportional representation, for four-year terms.
The county assembly elects the executive county leadership, decides on the yearly budget, the county properties etc.
The leader of a county is a ''župan'' (sometimes translated as "prefect"), who has one or two deputies each called a ''dožupan''. The župan presides over the county's executive government (''županijsko poglavarstvo''), and represents the county in external affairs.

List of counties

The list of counties, grouped into historic and geographic larger regions:

'No.'	'County'	'Official name'
Central Croatia
1.	Zagreb	Zagrebačka županija
2.	Krapina-Zagorje	Krapinsko-zagorska županija
3.	Sisak-Moslavina	Sisačko-moslavačka županija
4.	Karlovac	Karlovačka županija
5.	Varaždin	Varaždinska županija
6.	Koprivnica-Križevci	Koprivničko-križevačka županija
7.	Bjelovar-Bilogora	Bjelovarsko-bilogorska županija
20.	Međimurje	Međimurska županija
21.	City of Zagreb	Grad Zagreb
Istria, Northern seacoast and Mountainous Croatia
8.	Primorje-Gorski Kotar	Primorsko-goranska županija
9.	Lika-Senj	Ličko-senjska županija
18.	Istria	Istarska županija
Slavonia
10.	Virovitica-Podravina	Virovitičko-podravska županija
11.	Požega-Slavonia	Požeško-slavonska županija
12.	Brod-Posavina	Brodsko-posavska županija
14.	Osijek-Baranja	Osječko-baranjska županija
16.	Vukovar-Syrmia	Vukovarsko-srijemska županija
Dalmatia
13.	Zadar	Zadarska županija
15.	Šibenik-Knin	Šibensko-kninska županija
17.	Split-Dalmatia	Splitsko-dalmatinska županija
19.	Dubrovnik-Neretva	Dubrovačko-neretvanska županija

Naming

The suffixes ''-čka'', ''-ska'' in the original names indicate adjective, and so the full original name of each of them is ''$name županija'', so e.g. Karlovačka's full name is ''Karlovačka županija''. Some counties also prefer to swap the order of those two words but they are in the minority (since February 7, 1997 when the order was officially changed).

Cities

Zagreb itself is ''grad'', a city, due to its importance it's separated from its county and given similar jurisdiction. Any town with population over 30,000 can separate from its county, but only Zagreb used this option.

References

★ ''Hrvatske županije kroz stoljeća'' (Croatian Counties Across Centuries), ed. Ivo Goldstein, Zagreb, 1996

See also

★ Etymology of ''županija''